A Double Song-Time Sunday!

Apologies for being largely absent the last week. As I said, orientation took up a lot of my time, so much so that I missed the last Song-Time Sunday. For this reason, I am giving everyone double the songs today!

First up we have a very popular partisan song, “Bella Ciao.” Because of its popularity, in fact, I have found a ridiculous number of versions, including one by Chumbawumba. What?

I’ve been thinking about singing “Bella Ciao” for my show, actually. It’s a nice song, and very symbolic. I have mixed feelings about it, only because it does carry so much weight and it is so recognizable. We shall see.

Okay, so to be fair this next song isn’t…entirely Italian. But I’ve been really into Italian-American immigrants, as you probably know. Sooooo…Dean Martin’s “Mambo Italiano!” Talk about stereotypes! Still, I love this song.

Finding lyrics for this has been interesting, because nobody seems to be able to get the dialecty Anglo-Italian stuff. I’ve tried my best:

A boy went back to Napoli
Because he missed the scenery
The native dances and the charming songs
But wait a minute, something’s wrong….

Hey, mambo! Mambo italiano!
Hey, mambo! Mambo italiano
Go, go, go you mixed up Siciliano
All you Calabrese do the mambo like you crazy with a

Hey mambo, don’t wanna tarantella
Hey mambo, no more a mozzarella
Hey mambo! Mambo italiano!
Try an enchilada with baccala and then a –

Hey compar’, I love a how you dance a rhumba
But take a some advice paisano –
Learn how to mambo;
If you gonna be a square
You ain’t a gonna go nowhere!

Okay…so I altered the lyrics from Rosemary Clooney’s version of the song, apparently (found here: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/rosemary-clooney/mambo-italiano.html), and it’s pretty challenging. I was a little stunned that this version didn’t have the “baccala” part correct – I thought that was pretty straightforward. Of course, many of the other version had Joe shaking like “tiavanna,” not “Giovanno,” so…. Moral of the story, Italian is difficult to understand when it’s smooshed in with English!

Anyway, I hope you have all enjoyed this double Song-Time Sunday! I promise to try and be better about posting this next week – now that I don’t have morning to evening orientation to distract me from my Div III!